[oskarth]

Don't you think there's a difference between isolated anecdotes and two dozen paragraphs with very similar content? Not to mention the fact that Dobelli reviewed Taleb's book, and that other authors have noticed similarities.

Also this paragraph:

Note that correspondence of content doesn't imply plagiarism. There is a book EXTREMELY similar to Fooled by Randomness called The Drunkard's Walk. Yet not a shade of plagiarism. Why? the examples and terminology were very different. Some ideas can be rediscovered by two people. And when asked, the author said: Had I known about FBR I wouldn't have written that book. An honorable man.

EDIT in reply to above edit: Note that Taleb isn't saying he's the originator of all the examples. Many are attributed in his footnotes, and he's not claming authorship of them. Many of the examples, as you say, are already in the common consciousness. Taleb is using these examples to drive other points. The only thing he is saying - in this article - is showing how Dobelli is obviously plagiarizing what he has written.

[michael_nielsen]

I said Dobelli should be embarassed. He certainly should be embarassed by several of those examples.

But Taleb's page is also embarassing to Taleb. He's presenting many of these as his original ideas when, well, they're simply not.

[oskarth]

I don't think Taleb is presenting many of these as his original ideas, he's merely (in the original context - his book) using them as examples to drive his other ideas.

If you ask Taleb himself, he would say that he's only had one idea - the rest are just derivations (his or someone else's), and using already observed phenomena and anecdotes to explain it and its consequences.

The only purpose of that article is to expose Dobelli, nothing else.

As to the specific quote Taleb basically reads as a reorganized and edited version of this last quote. - isn't it possible that he has had a very similar experience?